Taiwanese Film Friday

"This is one of the most gorgeous and maturely composed movies you'll see this year. I've rarely held my breath in anticipation of a director's next shot, each being a small movie unto itself. Working with the cinematographer Liao Ben-bong, Tsai finds a dozen amazing ways to experience a movie, like the scene where we find our intrepid ticket-taker watching ''Dragon Inn" so close that its projected image pours through the perforations in the screen and dots her face. There are so many textures that are exposed in a mere decision about how near to or far from a person to place a camera. You're reminded, in a way that only a great movie can, that such decisions produce an inexplicable magic, and that Tsai Ming-Liang, in addition to being a sterling director, is a superior magician."

Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe reviews Goodbye, Dragon Inn, which will be screened this Friday....

Read more:  http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2004/10/29/say_hello_to_an_eerily_exquisite_movie/

More on the film series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#goodbye

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Marie Howe: On adopting a child

Many of Marie Howe's recent poems and writings explore her experiences as the single mother of her daughter Grace Yi-Nan Howe. A single mother, Howe was in her fifties when she elected to adopt Grace from China in 2003.

"Three weeks in three Chinese cities (bicycles, smog, scorpions, SARS, an appendicitis attack), Yi-Nan sobbing throughout the fifteen-hour flight, and we were back in New York, slumped in a cab speeding through the rainy night." More in New York magazine.

Our new State Poet, Howe will be inaugurated along with State Author Alison Lurie on September 20 in Page Hall on the University at Albany downtown campus, 135 Western Ave.

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